ignite damage over time....HOW DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE?

so i was thinking just randomly("seems i been doing that allot trying to make a build from the uuber nerfed skills ") how does ignite over time work....i mean from a real life standpoint...heres a definition of ignite:

ig·nite
/iɡˈnīt/
verb
to catch fire or cause to catch fire.
now correct me if i am wrong here......but in order for something to "ignite" it has to be set on fire right? therefore ITS BURNING what is ignite damage over time......if you arent burning....all i can imagine is some one litterally flicking a lighter at light speed over and over again please some one help me make sense of this cause it confuses the hell out of me

You ignite an enemy. It is now burning.

You freeze an enemy. It is now frozen.

You shock an enemy. It is now shocked.

You lost me on "from a real-life standpoint". That's a utterly ridiculous standard to hold a game to. By a "real-life standpoint" the concept of life points makes no sense at all.

You ignite an enemy using fire and he then continues to take burning damage over time. I don't see the issue here?

All Ignite is Burning, but not all Burning is Ignite. In that sense, you can think of Ignite as a subset of Burning.

Bonuses to Burning Damage, Fire Damage, Fire Damage over Time, and Damage over Time will benefit your Ignites.

Bonuses to Ignite will not benefit, say, the Burning Damage you inflict from Righteous Fire, or Herald of Ash (anymore), or Fire Trap, etc.

maybe you need a break from the game?

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im_a_manatee wrote:

so i was thinking just randomly("seems i been doing that allot trying to make a build from the uuber nerfed skills ") how does ignite over time work....i mean from a real life standpoint...heres a definition of ignite:

ig·nite
/iɡˈnīt/
verb
to catch fire or cause to catch fire.
now correct me if i am wrong here......but in order for something to "ignite" it has to be set on fire right? therefore ITS BURNING what is ignite damage over time......if you arent burning....all i can imagine is some one litterally flicking a lighter at light speed over and over again please some one help me make sense of this cause it confuses the hell out of me

Friendly reminder that someone at GGG thought the name 'ethereal knives' for a spell that does *physical* damage made sense (ethereal means 'intangible' or 'lacking material substance'). Or that the notion of 'iron reflexes' just...doesn't work, when you actually think about it. Iron Fist Tournament? Sure. Iron Monkey? Why not. Iron Maiden? \m/! Iron Chef? Absolutely. But reflexes are meant to be everything iron is not. Turn your reflexes to iron and...you can't move. Literally.

...And don't forget, in the batshit crazy world of PoE, 'increased' and 'more' mean two very different things, whereas they're synonyms in what I like to consider 'plain English'.

And it's been that way from the start. They didn't care then; they surely don't care now.

As with a LOT of PoE that isn't straight-up big-brain number crunching adorned by its own infuriatingly arbitrary language (mastery of the user-unfriendly is confirmation of one's genius, you know), it's better if you just accept it makes sense to someone and that someone has much bigger fish to fry burn ignite than this.

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adghar wrote:

All Ignite is Burning, but not all Burning is Ignite. In that sense, you can think of Ignite as a subset of Burning.

Bonuses to Burning Damage, Fire Damage, Fire Damage over Time, and Damage over Time will benefit your Ignites.

Bonuses to Ignite will not benefit, say, the Burning Damage you inflict from Righteous Fire, or Herald of Ash (anymore), or Fire Trap, etc.

I rest my case -- this would read like utter nonsense to anyone not deeply initiated in PoE's hapless battering of English into whimpering submission. So you can't judge it by the standards of 'normal' English...well, you can, but:

Eknives aren't actually knives though as its a spell for an object created from nothing that disappears after a short while that sounds kinda ethereal.

Iron reflexes is a great name for something that converts evasion into getting hit it just needs technique on the end of it but then its too wordy.

Basically as far as naming tat goes they do OK, Adghar's summary might read like nonsense but its literally a one branch tree if that reads like gibberish you may as well give up understanding mechanics in anything :/

Maybe i've got too much of a programmers mind though could be too used to dealing with such. You have to get to conversion rules and things like can't be slowed below base movespeed before you get to the stuff I think is nebulous and/or badly written.

If you want to pick on a keystone it should be imbalanced guard lol just read that description, no wonder nobody takes it.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Maybe i've got too much of a programmers mind though could be too used to dealing with such.

And that's precisely the issue at hand -- GGG has always had an abundance of 'programmers minds'. Not that long ago Chris himself had to spell-check his own staff. Wouldn't surprise me if he still does. Note I said 'issue' and not 'problem' -- as you've shown, folks with programmer-brains are perfectly fine getting their heads around stuff made by other programmer brains. But I think it's part of a much larger problem: PoE's inability to go from merely 'popular' to 'populist'. Doesn't matter how many programmer-brained players you get -- if your game can't be understood by the lay person, it'll never transcend an implicitly elitist status. Or, to put it less obliquely, PoE will never be Diablo, even if at first blush or two it seems like a worthy successor. It will always be the indignant know-it-all little antisocial nerd to Diablo's inexplicably cool, beloved valedictorian.

Again, I'm sure many Exiles (myself included) can empathise with this.

its a tradeoff though you can have complexity or simplicity but not really both, I mean you mention diablo but if your talking 2 its full of similar complexities meanwhile 4 will probably come out with 2 stats attack and defense.

As long as different devs are supporting different crowds i think its OK, you lose alot of game when you try to reach some common goal for whatever you decide the average player is. Kinda like Ubisoft games are always 8/10 but will never be 10/10 just because they are too general and safe.

PoE's always been short of that accessibility I don't really know why they are so oppose to it but like all QoL changes I suspect its so important that they never get round to it, also known as not important at all :p. I get kinda tired explaining mechanics to different friends when they start a league but you can't just leave them to it or they end up in Act 8 with 1k life and 300dps.

I will say that its not a binary state though - they could fix it if they want to and make it so the systems are met with a degree of success if you go in unknowing. This is the best middle ground IMO but so few games take the time to obfuscate the right stats for simplicity but retain the depth if you go digging.

Sorry i'm kinda talking in a circle i've lost the plot lmao